


a blast from the past

by darkmillennium



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AND IT'S MICHAELMAS, Birthday Presents, Fluff and Humor, Gift Giving, IT'S ADAM'S BIRTHDAY Y'ALL, M/M, OF COURSE I WROTE SOMETHING, adam's too used to his shit, michael thinks he's so funny and he actually is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmillennium/pseuds/darkmillennium
Summary: There’s a giant stuffed bear sitting at the foot of his bed, looming at him almost ominously.Adam gestures to the bear, a flap of his hands that he doesn’t think properly emphasizes how muchwhat the actual fuck is thisthat he’s feeling right now. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that...wasn’t thereyesterday. Right?”
Relationships: Michael & Adam Milligan, Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 123





	a blast from the past

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY ADAM'S BIRTHDAY AND HAPPY MICHAELMAS HERE'S SOME BIRTHDAY SHENANIGANS

Adam wakes up.

Of course he does. He wakes up every time he decides to sleep. 

He wakes up, though, and there’s a giant stuffed bear sitting at the foot of his bed, looming at him almost ominously. Adam shoots upwards, still staring at it, leaning his weight on his forearm as he does so. 

It looks suspiciously like the one he’d gotten from his mother’s coworker—Alice, her name had been—on his fifth birthday, the one that his mom had given away to the little girl who lived down the street when Adam had grown too old for it. It’s a little different, though—this one was green instead of blue, and lacked the hat that his old one had worn.

“Michael?” he calls out, the confusion in his voice so thick that he can practically taste it on his tongue. Michael appears on the bed next to him, leaning back against the headboard with his legs stretched out like he’s a cat making himself comfortable. 

Adam gestures to the bear, a flap of his hands that he doesn’t think properly emphasizes how much _what the actual fuck is this_ that he’s feeling right now. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that... _wasn’t there_ yesterday. Right?”

Michael gives the bear a once-over, completely and entirely unconcerned save for a small little smile that Adam can see twitching at the corner of his lips, and that’s how Adam instantly realizes that this was Michael’s doing.

For _whatever_ reason.

“Right,” Michael says, as simply as if he were describing the weather and not the _giant fucking stuffed animal_ that had apparently made its new home in Adam’s room. 

“Okay. Great. So, uh, _why_ is it here?”

The archangel sends him a faux-innocent look, widening his eyes almost imperceptibly and shrugging like the winged asshole he is. 

The smile ruins it.

Adam can feel his own mouth twitching to smile back in return and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from doing so. Instead, he shakes his head and moves to get out of bed. 

What’s a mysterious bear-archangel combo after a thousand years of Hell, right? Might as well go get something to eat.

* * *

There’s watches in his cereal bowl.

Adam tips the box into the bowl, expecting the clatter of Cocoa Puffs, and instead there’s watches. Actual, legitimate watches, sleek and shiny and eerily similar to the one he’d gotten when he was fifteen. He’d had it up until just a few hours before he’d died—the first time, anyway. He’d taken it off for a morning shower and then forgot to put it back on, and...well, there was no need to get into the details, was there?

But now there were a bunch of watches filling his bowl, and _really,_ he should’ve guessed that something was up when he’d realized that the cereal box was heavier than usual, but he was still trying to suppress the memory of the cold, dead eyes of the bear. 

Seriously. It had been looking _right at_ him.

Adam’s still staring at the bowl when he feels trickles of amusement start emanating from Michael’s grace, and he turns to face the entertained archangel from where he’s standing directly behind him. Michael’s hands are in his pockets, smile still ever-present on his face, and Adam holds up the box.

“Watches?”

“Watches,” Michael confirms, his eyes twinkling with laughter even though he makes no further noise.

Adam nods once in complete and utter defeat, reaches into the box, and grabs one for himself. Setting the box down, he wraps the two cords around his wrist and sets to work fumbling with the straps, losing grip of them twice before Michael steps close and curls his hands around them.

“Let me,” he murmurs, his deft fingers dancing feather-light on Adam’s skin as he works the straps with precise efficiency. Adam’s too busy staring at him to even notice when he finishes—they suddenly exist in a thousand eternities compressed into a measly second, Michael’s face not even a foot from his, each brush against the inside of his wrist sending warm flutters to the pit of his stomach until he feels like he might float away. 

“There,” Michael says, bringing Adam slamming back down into reality, and he looks down to find the watch fastened perfectly on him—not too tight, nor too loose. 

Michael’s hands linger longer than they probably should before finally disappearing back into the folds of his pockets. Adam swallows and clears his throat, averting his eyes back to the box and turning back to his bowl.

“Please tell me you didn’t do this to all my food.”

When he hears Michael start chuckling, he can’t help the way his shoulders start to shake as his own laughter fills the air.

* * *

There’s no end to the madness. 

A jacket in the fridge that almost matches the one he’d gotten for his fourteenth birthday, a pair of shoes in his cupboard similar to the ones his mom had given him for his sixteenth, and more and more until he’s finding little trinkets in practically every nook and cranny in their apartment. It’s like a game, with Adam on the hunt for whatever else Michael had hidden with a snap of his fingers while Adam had been asleep as the archangel in question trails behind him, still radiating fond amusement every step of the way. 

All the little gifts are close enough to their original counterparts that they allow quiet nostalgia to burrow its way into Adam’s heart, but not so close that it makes it ache. Michael’s added his own little twist to each and every one of them, and it makes Adam almost want to marvel at the seemingly-ordinary items as he looks over the small pile he’s accumulated. 

“Alright, spill,” Adam says, grinning slightly as he meets Michael’s eyes. “What’s this about? Really.”

“You still don’t know?” Michael asks in return, raising his eyebrows. Adam, very pointedly, takes care not to let his gaze fall down to the upwards curve of his lips. 

Adam peers at the pile again, mind grasping for any sort of explanation, but he’s drawing blanks left and right. “Nope.”

The archangel’s smile seems to broaden, and Adam watches as a box materializes in his hands, roughly the size of a shoebox. He holds it out to him with eyes warm enough to melt ice.

“Happy birthday, kid.”

Birthday?

_Birthday._

Oh.

Adam reaches for the box, his conversational retort of _You know what a birthday is?_ dying on his tongue as he realizes he _knows_ this box. Has _always_ known it, from the very time that he was little.

This was his mom’s _picture_ box. The one that she kept under her bed, where all the pictures that weren’t on display in the house went. It’s a little heavy in his hands but he barely feels it, watching it with wide eyes and handling it with cautious hands like it’s about to bite him. 

“It isn’t a copy,” Michael says, answering Adam’s sudden, burning question right before it leaves his mouth. The implications of that—that Michael had gone _back in time_ to get this—almost makes Adam go a little weak at the knees, because this...this is his _past._

All of it, in one box.

The thought is daunting, part of the reason that he hadn’t wanted Michael to bring his mom back when they’d escaped from the Cage, even after Michael had offered. The past was a place where he didn’t belong anymore, and it had seemed cruel to drag his mother into a time where she didn’t belong. 

But these were _pictures._ He could see her, with these; even if he couldn’t _see_ her.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he lifts the lid, inhaling sharply through his nose as his mom and himself greet him as the first picture on top. Michael had gotten the ones that had been set out around the house too, evidently, because Adam remembers this one—it had been on the fridge.

His mother’s smiling face beams up at him, wide and beautiful, and it does her more justice than any of his old memories ever could. Details that he’d forgotten stand out starkly against her form, and his eyes flicker over her smile again and again until they start to blur hot with tears, entirely obstructing his ability to see. 

“Adam?” he hears, concern filling the air, and Adam sniffs, using the sleeve of his jacket to try and wipe his eyes before quickly setting the box on the table and practically tackling Michael in a hug. 

If Michael had been human, Adam was pretty sure that the intensity of his grip would’ve been painful. As it is, Michael’s arms simply rise up to hug him in return, holding him gently in a gesture that had long grown familiar to them. 

“Thank you,” Adam whispers, burying his face in the crook of Michael’s neck and squeezing his eyes shut. _“Thank you.”_

“Of course,” Michael says, his tone low and soft in a way that Adam had only ever heard it be a few ephemeral times. It makes him breathe out a small, wet chuckle at the impossibility of all, and Michael tightens his grip by the most marginal of amounts in response. 

Yeah. It was a happy birthday.

* * *

“You have a birthday today too and you didn’t even tell me?”

“I don’t think a religious celebration in my name counts as a _birthday,_ kid. I don't even _have_ a birthday. I existed before time itself.”

“Nope, it’s a birthday. And I didn’t even _get_ you anything—how long does your _celebration_ last? Usually these whole religious things are longer, right?”

“...”

“Hey! See, Wikipedia says that the Romans used to do celebrations on the thirtieth, too! So we can go old-school and do it tomorrow. But we gotta do it right next year, okay?”

“...Go nuts, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!! comments are super appreciated!!! have a nice day :)
> 
> my tumblr is @adammilligans!


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